Homemade Seed Tape Project Finished!

Making homemade seed tapes.
Watch a great video at the bottom of this story!

We made homemade seed tapes this year!  The Jr. Master Gardening Group made many of the tapes, and during lunch, our employees completed the rest.

Our long seed tapes

Seed tapes are great, but to buy them can be expensive.  They save you time compared to sowing loose seed by hand.  They are quick to sow, removed the guesswork when sowing, it evenly spreads straight lines of plants, prevents wash off of seeds, there are fewer wasted seeds, you get good germination results, and there is less thinning of the seedlings!

What you need:

1 ply toilet paper
Small paint brushes
Flour paste mixed with equal parts water and flour 1:1 ratio
Ruler
Pen or marker pen
Plastic baggies

Our garden rows are 28' long, and on many of our rows we are tripling our crop plantings, by planting rows that are 1' wide, with three seed tapes for each row.  

For example – “x’s” below indicate seeds in a row.  So, three tapes, per row, and alternated to get maximum production.  When laid out, it will look like this the example to the right:

TIPS:

Seed tapes rolled and ready!

• We used the brush side of the brush to dab a dot of the flour past.  We used the opposite end to pick up the tiny seeds and put them on the dot.  If you put just a tiny dab of flour past on the opposite end, you could consistently pick up about 3 seeds at a time.  We put about 3 seeds for each dot in case of seed failure.
• Before rolling up the seed tapes, at the end we marked the name of the crop, how deep to sow them, and how long the seed tape is.  Our conference room table is 10' long, so we would make two 10' tapes and one 8' tape for each row.
• When the tapes were rolled up, we put them in plastic baggies.  This will keep moisture away from them, and on planting day will be easy to give to the volunteers for each planting row!

- Contributed by Joni Fletty